Macgamestore.com recently added Colin McRae Rally to its list of Mac game titles. The game allows players to race over 30 cars across more than 300 stages in nine different international locations, and features realistic physics and car handling.

The core of the game is the non-linear, multi-discipline Career Challenge. Start out in the lower leagues of club rallying and learn your craft in over 20 different classes of rally events. Drive the most diverse selection of cars through more than 300 tracks in 9 worldwide locations.

As well as the Career challenge, you'll be able to jump straight into a 4WD championship, take on a single rally or individual stage, and then take on the world in online rallies with up to 8 players.

9 international locations (new German rally joins events through UK, Sweden, USA, Finland, Australia, Spain, Greece, and Japan) in Rally game mode, each with 8 stages and variable weather conditions. Large, animated spectator crowds cheer you on through the stages. Each stage features interactive scenery, so if you push too hard and hit a tree (or when, to be more accurate), you'll see it shudder from the impact and drop leaves from the branches.

Macsimum News has posted a new review of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008, the latest incarnation of the popular golf sim. The game gives golfing enthusiasts a wide range of play and customization options, and offers the chance to go head to head against PGA legends. Macsimum News gave Tiger Woods 2008 a score of 4 out of 10.

From the review:

Why does Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 sometimes lock up? The folks at EA say they’re aware of “a graphical issue that occurs with an iMac 7.1 that uses the ATI 2600 HD video card.” This is caused by a driver issue with the video card that, per EA, will be addressed in a system update by Apple later this month.

Then there’s the problem of graphics corruption. If you use a system that has less than 256MB of VRAM, you may experience graphical corruption if you set the Tree Texture Detail to maximum. To resolve this, try using a lower Tree Texture Detail setting.

For video cards with 256MB of video RAM, only the 1600×1200 resolution is available. Meanwhile, some video cards will experience graphical corruption while running in 1600×1200 resolution. If you experience any graphic anomalies while running the game in 1600×1200 resolution, EA recommends lowering your game resolution to resolve these issues.

If that’s not bad enough, on some NVIDIA 8600 and ATI X2600-based machines, graphical corruption and hard locks may occur at higher detail levels. In these instances, set the graphics quality to a lower setting and restart the game.

Macsoft has released updates for Age of Empires III and and Age of Mythology, bringing the games to versions 1.0.3 and 2.0.1, respectively. The patches offer Leopard compatibility updates for both real time strategy titles. The Age of Empires III update also includes graphical improvements and a fix for an issue with chatting.

AOE III:- Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard network compatibility hotfix. This allows 10.5 Leopard users to play Multiplayer games against 10.4.x Tiger and 10.3.9 Panther users.- Mac Dynamic Shadow rendering has been improved and now works on a wider variety of high-end graphics cards and CPUs.- Chatting now works correctly in the Networking "Vote to Drop Player" dialog.

RPG Watch has conjured up a hands-on preview of Eschalon: Book 1, Basilisk Games upcoming RPG inspired by classic games in the genre. Among other things the preview examines the game's character generation system, environment, and unique combat system.

The first thing that strikes you is the production values – this is a beautifully crafted game that doesn’t just set a new benchmark for indie CRPGs, it would be perfectly at home on retail shelves if it wasn’t for the fact that 2D games have been long abandoned. From the main menu on, the presentation is stellar, with a crisp and elegant interface that’s both easy to use and attractive, clean graphics and solid sound. It’s clear considerable thought has been put into the interface and controlling the game and there are many AAA projects that don’t do anywhere near as well. The only downside is the disappointing resolution, which is fixed at 800x600 – although you can play in a window.

Character creation is a key part of the game, despite only being able to play a human male. There are eight primary attributes, divided into physical (strength, dexterity, endurance, speed) and mental (intelligence, wisdom, perception, concentration). A starting set of stats is rolled and a further 15 points can be distributed. There are also five origins, as well as five axioms and five classes to choose from.

The origins confer different attribute bonuses (Nor’landers, for example, are hardy folk and gain +2 Endurance and +1 Concentration), while axioms are essentially belief systems, such as “Atheistic” or “Virtuous”. Eschalon has an interesting approach with axioms – virtuous characters automatically receive the bless spell without requiring the normal divination skill but they are more susceptible to evil curses. Atheists, on the other hand, don’t believe in supernatural bunk so they are immune to curses but also miss out on bless and healing from a friendly priest.

The PC version of Eschalon: Book 1 is available now, with a Mac version currently planned to reach gamers before the end of the Year.

From the Basilisk Forums:

I can tell you that the Mac version is basically done. We will get a few people to test the Mac version this next week and we should have it ready to go before Christmas (remember, the Mac version shares 99.9% the same code base, so any bugs fixed during the PC test were fixed on the Mac as well). The Linux demo will be out soon too.